magic spot nucleotides

magic spot nucleotides

A popular term for a pair of spots which, when first described, were of unknown nature (i.e., “magic”), seen on thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and later identified as guanosine 5’-diphosphate 3’-diphosphate (ppGpp) and guanosine 5’-triphosphate 3’-diphosphate (pppGpp).
The two nucleotides accumulate during the stringent response reaction in bacteria, in which multiple metabolic pathways shut down when one or more amino acids are present in limited quantities.